Geek factor:: Before entering the movie business, Fangmeier logged hours as a computer systems programmer and image processor at the rocket R&D lab, the Aerospace Corporation.

Highlights:: A 200-foot tower of wind in Twister and the giant crashing waves in The Perfect Storm.

Big save:: Took over the visual effects on Master and Commander mid-production after the original f/x house fell behind. He finalized some 700 shots, which combined full-scale props, miniature and CG ships, storm-tossed seas, skies, sailors, and blazing cannon fire.

Career high:: Lemony Snicket's iron-jawed supertot Sunny. "It's 95 percent real baby and 5 percent CG," says Fangmeier, who filmed an infant, then animated her face from the eyes down and lip-synced her mouth. For her body movement, he took motion-capture footage of ILM employees' kids.

Inspiration:: The Pre-Raphaelite painters. "They captured the emotion of what we feel when we look at a scene," Fangmeier says. "CG does the same thing. You can't model every pore. You have to approximate, reduce complexity to create a visual illusion for a particular viewing angle."

Specialty: Taking risks. He's still recovering from his performance-capture experiment with director Robert Zemeckis on their ninth film together, Polar Express. "I'm usually pretty scared going into it."

Highlight:: The gruesome brain-munching earwigs in 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Ralston equipped rod puppets with a mechanism in their jaws made from a tea strainer he found in a coffee shop. "I bent it, cut it, and then stitched it into the monsters' little mouths."